Capital Plan for Clean Prosperity: Heavy Industry

The world is at a turning point. Will we address the climate crisis in a timely and adequate manner and create a low-carbon economy, or will we fail to see the benefits of the transition and instead face the catastrophic impacts of global heating ill-prepared? With Canada’s energy intensive economy, there are market opportunities in climate adaptation and mitigation. Now is the perfect time to recalibrate Canada’s economy to thrive in a low-carbon world. The prize includes stronger GDP growth, hundreds of thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars of savings. What’s missing to get us there is an aggressive clean stimulus package to turbocharge the transition, one that would require an investment of slightly under 2% of the national GDP over six years.

With files from Toby Heaps and Aleena Naseem

The urgent need to transition into a low-carbon economy is becoming increasingly clear. Abnormally violent natural disasters are ravaging countless parts of the world and various intergovernmental reports have warned that the window is closing to avoid the worst of climate change. As fossil fuels are a central climate culprit, industries based on these energy sources are trying to find ways to adapt to a changing world where investors are increasingly wary about the industry’s future. In Canada, the stakes are high to ensure a more efficient cost structure for oil and gas extraction while kickstarting the industry’s diversification into renewable fuels and valuable materials.

Capital Plan for Clean Prosperity: Electricity

With files from Toby Heaps and Aleena Naseem.

Transitioning to a low-carbon economy is no longer solely an environmental necessity, it’s a substantial but largely untapped economic opportunity. The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate estimates that low-carbon growth fuelled by climate action could present economic opportunities of at least $26 trillion through 2030.^[1] There's no reason for Canada not to aggressively tap into this market to deliver emissions reductions, strengthen national and provincial economies and meet our international climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. An aggressive clean stimulus program could bring Canadians hundreds of thousands of new jobs and increase the national GDP by several hundred billion dollars. The entire program would require investing approximately 2% of GDP over the next six years into decarbonization projects that would bring the aforementioned economic benefits.

Capital Plan for Clean Prosperity: Transport

 With files from Aleena Naseem and Toby Heaps

The urgency of transitioning to a low-carbon economy is becoming clearer by the day with the best science calling for increasingly drastic emissions reductions to help head off catastrophic climate change impacts. While a daunting task, the economic, social and environmental opportunities of transitioning into a low-carbon economy are significant. An aggressive clean stimulus program to implement decarbonizing technologies at scale could bring Canadians substantial economic benefits, including GDP growth and hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The entire program would require investing a little less than 2% of GDP over the next six years. It would also enable Canada to emerge as a serious actor in the growing low-carbon technology market.

  With files from Aleena Naseem and Toby Heaps

Time is running out. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we must halve our global emissions in the next 10 years and reach net zero emissions by 2050 to avoid widespread catastrophe and human misery. Yet governments and businesses are not keeping up, with many arguing that fighting climate change with sufficient vigour would be detrimental to Canada’s economy and economies around the world. After crunching the numbers, however, it’s clear that there’s significant economic upside to ambitiously transitioning to a low-carbon economy. A bold clean stimulus program would drive demand at scale to deploy a host of decarbonization technologies economy-wide, with significant ripple effects including hundreds of billions of dollars of GDP growth and hundreds of thousands of new jobs, while placing Canadian industry at the forefront of a large growing global market for low-carbon solutions. How much would this cost? A little under 2% of GDP for the next six years.